For there is a weather phenomenon that is known and accepted by scientists, but little understood - that of the megacryometeor.

Literally translated as a ‘massive ice block’ that falls from the sky, the phenomenon is still being investigated by scientists - who ramped up their research after huge blocks of ice fell regularly over the plains in Spain for ten days in 2000.

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Since then, Madrid has been the global centre for research into the phenomenon, and has confirmed that there is enough evidence to suggest that it is a genuine and bizarre meteorological phenomenon - and not caused solely by ice shearing off the wings of planes.

Large ice chunks and blocks have been found weighing tens of kilograms and more than 50 have been reported and scientifically recorded since the year 2000.

One landed in Brazil in 2007 that was weighed at more than 50kg - or 110lbs, equivalent to the weight of a seven-stone person.

While the chances of your home being hit by a falling block of ice from an aircraft are said to be a 500 million-to-one, the chances of it being a megacryometeor are even slimmer.

The phenomenon also pre-dates the advent of human powered flight - which scientists say discounts the theory that every block of ice that falls from the sky has come from an aircraft.

In Scotland in August 1849, chunks of ice measuring up to two-metres across fell into the countryside.

Very often they are reported as falling out of clear, cloudless skies, which still baffles scientists studying the phenomenon.

(Image: Bristol Live)

What is mystifying meteorologists is that they do not appear to need thunderstorm conditions to form like hailstones, and scientists still do not know what conditions causes them to fall.

The make-up of the ice itself is consistent with the frozen water being the same kind of water that makes rain and hailstones, but why and how it creates what must be rapidly forming, mega blocks of ice is still unknown.

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Many in meteorology are still sceptical about the phenomenon, and say that reports of this happening are almost certainly always connected to aircraft - something that scientists who do study them dispute.

(Image: James Beck/Freelance)

Ice falling from the sky is not unheard of in Bristol. In July 2009, a pensioner called David Gammon, 76 at the time, was left badly bruised when a block of ice the size of a grapefruit hit him on the thigh as he sat in his garden, which happens to be in the flightpath for Bristol Airport.

That was blamed on an aircraft, and the larger block that fell on Jamie Shean’s house in Lockleaze is also being blamed on an aircraft.

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The advent of searchable, up-to-the-minute tracking of commercial aircraft means it is possible to see not only that there was an aircraft over the flat at roughly the time the incident happened, but also which aircraft it was.

A spokesperson for Heathrow Airport, which is regularly dealing with issues arising from being a busy airport surrounded by suburban streets, said blocks of ice falling from the sky could be the megacryometeor phenomenon.

(Image: James Beck/Freelance)

“It is usually assumed that ice falling from the sky is aviation related but incidences have been reported worldwide of large lumps of ice, known as megacryometeors, falling from the sky, despite there being no clouds and no aviation activity nearby,” he said.

“This phenomenon is still under investigation by scientists but the origin of the ice is still unknown,” he added.